Learning Services

At the same time, there is yet another element that is coming up, which is from the perspective of the source of learning. In earlier times, it was about these so-called gurus or so-called masters of a subject who are supposed to be experts in an area, disseminating this knowledge to the end user via multiple mediums, be it internet or blackboard instruction. The point of view and subject matters were supposed to be these gurus’ or the teachers’.

But now, in fact even in real experiments, what has happened in classrooms is that instructors have taken innovative models by which they form groups of students to work on some projects or some group work. In such instances, studies have revealed that students are learning more from interacting and collaborating with peers by working towards a common goal. 

We see the emergence of a new paradigm of what is called collaborative or peer-to-peer learning. I think this is an emerging phenomenon in this whole learning area where we can not only leverage the collective knowledge of the experts but also the collective experiential knowledge of the learner’s peers. This leads to a great model whereby we can create a bottom up co-creation model of learning which can coexist with the top down. This model does not say good or bad, but we have to have a way by which we should be able to provide the learner with the mechanisms to choose between the optimal combinations of both. And that is what we call a balanced approach to the next generation learning. 

That given, another dimension is emerging from a knowledge management perspective of this whole collaborative learning. If you look today, even in corporate learning scenarios or instructional learning scenarios where a lot of experiential knowledge is important, the tacit knowledge is a very difficult area to capture. And it is in this arena that the collaborative, peer-to-peer informal learning mechanisms are penetrating in a big way. These mechanisms provide a way by which users are now enthused to contribute content rather than they being pushed towards some content which may or may not be relevant. 

Just-in-case learning, in the classical model, where you are given this huge volume of literature. It may be my Class IX grade calculus learning, which I did not think would be of any use probably after class XII. Whereas, if I want to do COBOL programming, I am given training of one month just before the project execution and it gives me a just-in-time gathering of the fundamentals of that language and allows me to put them to use. So probably, I will remember my COBOL fundamentals better than what my calculus fundamentals were. 

That is an important element which is also emerging in learning trends. If you look at the fundamental principle of Web 2.0, there are four main trends here.

First, if you look at it, it is about the end user being empowered both as the producer of a service, a function, or content and as a consumer. In that sense if you look at the collaborative content that is generated by the end users (or what is called user-generated content), it has an equal opportunity to be the resource for content as much as the classical expert-led content. So, that way, if you look at the whole table of contents of a typical curriculum for the future and  if one wants to design it,  then the significant part has to be from user-generated content. It could be based on experiences he is having as part of the project or it could be as part of his interactions with peers. So, the interaction element, which is important from the social aspect, is also an element of the learning which he takes into account.

To summarize this particular user-generated aspect, we are seeing emergence of what is called social learning, which is basically learning from interaction with the client, and the generation of user-based content which contributes to and augments expert-led content. 

Second, the whole idea of the emergence of Web 2.0 in the area of learning is about  massive virtual environment or massive real web-based approaches to aggregation of content or to enable real time collaboration between different stakeholders across the world. So, because of this collaboration and this integration of content, both possibilities emerging from Web 2.0, today we are seeing Web 2.0 contributing in a major way to next- generation classrooms.

For example, if you look at Second Life, we are seeing a lot of classrooms from different universities hosting virtual classrooms in Second Life. So, what is that? It is basically leveraging this idea to provide a virtual test bed for interaction for these learners to learn from each other and also to contribute to the overall content for the classroom.  So that way the technology is helping it achieve in that way. 

Similarly, if you look at from the other side of collaboration, which is about informal knowledge generated out of blogs, wikis etc., today it is an amazing source to provide user-generated content, ranking high, as much as say Encyclopedia Britannica or Discovery Channel.  At this point, I would like each of you to explore a project called “Wiki Books”.   It is an amazing project.  You should go to Wiki Books and see the kind of books that have been written by collaborative authors who all may be not experts in writing about the full spectrum of the subject, but who are all contributing collaboratively to create a mass of knowledge which will probably challenge the entire physical print medium of books from leading publishers tomorrow. Just like Wikipedia has overthrown Encyclopedia Britannica, Wiki Books has the potential to be the biggest source of learning, whether it is for corporate learning or for educational learning. That is the power we are seeing from the Web 2.0 perspective.

Third dimension which I would like to share is about is what the future holds.  As I said, the future is about being able to generate a user-driven approach to create a personalized learning environment in which a user can choose what content he wants to assimilate, and at the same time also has the power to improve the content. That is important. If you look at giving collaboration to the participation element of Web 2.0, that is just one side of it.  Also, there is a mechanism by which you can actually correct the content by means of proper editing.  Take Wikipedia: there are tremendous edits by experts who not only improve the overall content by means of editing, but enable us to see an enriched and really useful body of knowledge. 

So in terms of the future, we see that personalized learning environments are the trend to go. In terms of deep dive adoption of technology, we are seeing that probably Virtual Reality and Second Life kind of approaches will become more and more mainstream to create what is called virtual learning environments.

Fourth phenomenon, which is my personal favorite, in which we will see integration and absorption of more open technologies. Not just Web 2.0, it could even be things like multimedia or internet-based learning. It could also be service-oriented architecture where you can make a Web 2.0 kind of interface over conventional rigid learning management systems, and then absorb part of the content from informal sources and blend it with different sources of Learning Management Systems (LMS) products and then provide something which the end user may want to use in his personal environment.

So, with this I would like to say that the future era is going to be about leveraging all kinds of technologies, and not just Web 2.0. It is about the conglomeration of the different possibilities of content sources. Also, in this process, the role of the so-called experts or teachers transforms from being content producers and providers, to assemblers and facilitators to aid the learner in his personal learning experience.